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Northern Ireland · CCEAQ&A
Digital TechnologyQ&A by dot point
A short Q&A bank for every Northern Ireland Digital Technology syllabus dot point. Each question and answer is drawn directly from our worked dot-point page, so you can scan key concepts before opening the long-form answer.
A2 1 Information Systems
- Artificial intelligence and its applications: expert systems and their components, natural language and voice recognition, and robotics, with their uses, benefits and limitations.3Q&A pairs
- Cloud computing and its service and deployment models, mobile technologies and their uses, and the benefits and drawbacks of each for individuals and organisations.3Q&A pairs
- Network types (LAN, WAN, PAN), network topologies (bus, star, ring and mesh) and the hardware that connects a network.3Q&A pairs
- Data mining and the discovery of patterns in large data sets, the characteristics of big data, and the uses, benefits and ethical concerns of analysing large data sets.3Q&A pairs
- The impact of legislation on individuals and organisations (data protection, computer misuse, copyright) and the moral, ethical and social issues raised by digital technology.3Q&A pairs
- Network protocols and the role of TCP/IP, transmission media (wired and wireless), and error detection and correction techniques such as parity, checksum and the check digit.3Q&A pairs
- Optimising databases with indexing, maintaining data integrity, and securing databases with access rights, encryption and backup, including concurrency in multi-user systems.3Q&A pairs
- The features of a relational database (tables, primary and foreign keys, relationships), entity relationship modelling, and normalisation to third normal form.3Q&A pairs
- Using a database through Structured Query Language (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) and query by example, including selecting, sorting and joining data.3Q&A pairs
A2 2 Application Development (Case Study)
AS 1 Approaches to Systems Development
- The waterfall, iterative or incremental and agile or rapid application development methodologies, their characteristics, advantages, disadvantages and the situations that suit each.3Q&A pairs
- The purpose and contents of technical documentation and user documentation, and the audience each serves during development, use and maintenance.3Q&A pairs
- The purpose and types of feasibility (technical, economic, legal, operational and schedule), fact-finding techniques for requirements gathering, and functional and non-functional requirements.3Q&A pairs
- Implementation and installation of a system, the changeover methods (direct, parallel, phased and pilot), their advantages, disadvantages and suitability, and data conversion and user training.3Q&A pairs
- The fact-finding techniques used during investigation: interviews, questionnaires, observation and inspection of documents, with the advantages and disadvantages of each.3Q&A pairs
- The purpose of system maintenance and the three types of maintenance (corrective, adaptive and perfective), with examples of each.3Q&A pairs
- Designing the inputs, outputs, processing, data storage and user interface of a system, and the design tools used: data flow diagrams, system flowcharts, entity relationship diagrams and the data dictionary.3Q&A pairs
- Levels of testing (unit, integration, system and acceptance), the purpose of a test plan, and the use of normal, boundary and erroneous test data.3Q&A pairs
- The stages of the systems development life cycle, the activities carried out in each stage and the documented outputs each stage hands on to the next.3Q&A pairs
AS 2 Fundamentals of Digital Technology
- The components of the CPU, the role of memory and buses, the fetch-decode-execute cycle, and the factors that affect processor performance.3Q&A pairs
- The distinction between data, information and knowledge, data types, and the validation and verification techniques that protect data quality.3Q&A pairs
- Representing data in binary, hexadecimal and denary, converting between bases, and how characters, images and sound are encoded digitally.3Q&A pairs
- Primary memory (RAM, ROM, cache), secondary storage (magnetic, optical and solid state) and the characteristics that decide which is appropriate.3Q&A pairs
- System software and application software, the functions of an operating system, and the role of utility software.3Q&A pairs
- Types of user interface (graphical, command-line, menu and natural language), human-computer interaction, and the principles of good interface design including accessibility.3Q&A pairs